Prolifera de Redouté Centifolia. France, pre-1824. Description... At first, the deep rose pink, very double flowers are cabbage-like, then open flat and are very fragrant. 'Prolifera de Redouté' would be a most agreeable shrub were it not for its propensity for proliferation (another bud growing through the center of the flower.)...

Centifolia. c. 1820. Description and vital statistics. Clear deep rose pink with many petals, opening cabbage-like but with a high frequency of proliferation (another bud growing through the center of the flower)...

Mrs. Frederick L. Keays. Due to a shortage of labour in our vicinity, we have had to let nature have its way in a part of the place where many of the oldest and sincerest June-flowering bushes are planted. Occasional clearing of big weeds has been about all these bushes have had. Among them is a Centifolia which we have puzzled over for a long time, to arrive finally at the conclusion that it is the old Childing's Provence of the English, probably a Centifolia somewhat hybridized with a gallica. This rose has no intention of being beaten out by lack of culture or competition with that lovely weed, the Queen's ear-rings or some such name. This hardy rose produced its uplifted compounded clusters made up of corymbs of blooms, grouping into fifteen or twenty or maybe more, bright pink to rosy red flowers, paler on the edges, each rose dressed for the season with the loveliest winged and spatulate sepals - this delightful grandmother's rose bloomed in its extravagance as though it had been cultivated every week and there was not a weed within a hundred feet of it. The amusing thing about this rose is that it had a number of names, all based upon this production of immense and compounded clusters. It was called Mater Familias, La Mere Gigogne, - the old lady who lived in a shoe - and Prolifera. The several names indicate that long life had already become a feature. A rose does not acquire a surplus of names if it is not a dependable, long-lived sort. We pin much faith in this old lady who lived in a shoe, otherwise Childing's, color-plates of which may be enjoyed in the old rose books.

Prolifera This remarkable sport has all the characters of the old Cabbage, but the sepals are enormously enlarged and fern-like. From the centre of the flower springs a bud which sometimes opens, often not. It can be hardly called beautiful, but is a curiosity. Makes a large straggling bush. Illustrated by Redoute. This is in cultivation.